The destruction and esclavization of peoples of the great river (today known as Amazonas)

The Coñiapuyara (Amazon) river was the center of countless nations with extremely large populations. Usually, there is no idea adjusted to reality of what these cultures were. It is generally thought that in this supposedly "inhospitable" region the population density was low.

They were, it is said, small nomadic groups of hunters, fishermen and gatherers.

The reality painted by Fray Gaspar de Carvajal, a member of the expedition of Spanish explorers who came from Quito and was led by Francisco de Orellana, is very different.

Orellana and his people went down 5,000 kilometers down that river, accompanied by less than a hundred men. On their journey, these European adventurers traversed various kingdoms with very large populations. We do not know the real names of these countries... not even today, in any case this chronicler points out some indigenous denominations and others perhaps deduced or imagined

According to Gaspar de Carvajal, the most important kingdoms they knew were Aparian, Omagua, Paguana, a kingdom whose name is not indicated near the mouth of the Negro River, a kingdom they called "the province of las picotas", Quenyuc and Caripuna,

According to the story, most of these towns had complex political organizations with large and aggressive land and canoe armies.

Systematically, during most of his journey, Orellana and his people were attacked by hundreds of indigenous people sailing in canoes and dugouts, sometimes gathering forces of 10,000 or more warriors.

Everything seems to indicate that each of these kingdoms had several hundred thousand inhabitants, which can be deduced from the description of Machaparo, which according to De Carvajal's estimate had "50,000 fighting men".

On the morning of June 24 they were attacked by a group of natives led by the mythical Amazons. The Spaniards, faced with those women who were described as tall and vigorous who skillfully shot their bows, believed they were dreaming. In the scuffle they managed to take prisoner one of the men who accompanied the brave ladies, who told them that these women he called Coñiapuyara, which means great ladies in the Omagua language, Tupiguaraní (Amazon) had a queen named Conori and had large riches. Amazed by the encounter, the navigators baptized the river in honor of such fabulous women using the legendary Greek term of Amazons.

If we consider that the expeditionaries crossed a dozen large kingdoms, it can be estimated that the total population, only on the banks of the river, was of the order of 4 million inhabitants, taking into account the peoples who inhabited the larger tributaries, it can be estimated a much higher population, perhaps 10 times higher for an entire region of the central jungle, giving a figure of some tens of millions.

There were numerous societies, perhaps with several tens of thousands of inhabitants, a corresponding food production and a very dynamic political configuration.

We continue with the story of Gaspar de Carvajal because unfortunately we have no more testimonies. This chronicler, when referring to one of these towns, pointed out that they had "a great quantity of food, of turtles, in pens and water shelters, and a lot of meat and fish and biscuits, and this in such abundance that there was enough to eat a real of a thousand men a anus." Referring to the number of towns, he adds: "and because the towns were so many and so large and there were so many people, the captain did not want to take port... because they gave us so raw water that they made us go through the river. .."

They had complex cultures and sophisticated technologies that left Orellana and his crew impressed on more than one occasion.

Gaspar de Carvajal continues his chronicle: "They went down to a town and there was... a house where there was... a lot of crockery of various shapes, as well as jars like very large pitchers... this crockery is the best that has been seen, because Malaga is not equal to it, because it is completely glazed and enamelled in all colors, so vivid that it frightens, and in addition to this the drawings and paintings that are made in it are so measured that they naturally carve and draw everything like the Roman, and there the Indians told us that everything that this house had made of clay, the inland had made of gold and silver..."

The subsequent arrival of slave traders from Portugal and Brazil, European diseases, and a few other factors determined that over the next three or four centuries the population of these numerous and prosperous nations would decline dramatically.

Lately, new archaeological finds are confirming Carvajal's accounts and showing that this continent, in particular the Amazon rainforests, were densely populated from very ancient times.

Much information is still missing to solve the enigma of the disappearance of these great nations from the great Coñiapuyara river.

Perhaps to graphically end with the historical reconstruction of the virtual genocide experienced by the Amazonian nations, I share the description of the Jesuit Father Antonio Vieira where he testifies to the situation in the city of Maranhao in the northeast of Brazil in the 17th century.

Father Vieira said:

"At what a different price the Devil buys souls compared to what he offered for them previously! There is no market in the world where he can get them cheaper than here in our own land. In the Gospels, he offered all the kingdoms of the world for a soul; in Marañón, the devil does not need to offer even a tenth for all the souls. It is not necessary to offer worlds, nor kingdoms; it is not necessary to offer cities, nor towns, nor villages. All he has to do is offer a pair of Tapuya Indians and immediately he is worshiped on his knees. What a cheap market! An Indian for a soul! That Indian will be your slave for the few days he survives, but your soul will be enslaved for eternity, as long as God exists.

Some years later, in 1661, Vieira was expelled from Brazil and sentenced to prison by the Inquisition due to his "egalitarian heresies".

Six years later, already freed, he resumed his fight for the rights of slaves that he would continue until his death on July 18, 1697.

Today the remnants of all those numerous Amazonian nations are reduced to the least accessible places, culturally and physically attacked by settlers, missionaries and garimpeiros, and were denied their rights to the land.

Their current number does not exceed 200,000 inhabitants.

As indicated in the aforementioned chronicles, an important kingdom of the Great River was made up of the Omaguas, of Tupi-Guarani lineage who had displaced the Tikuna who were original settlers of the confluence of the Amazon with the Putumayo and Caquetá rivers. This happened above all because of the slave trade promoted and carried out by the Portuguese and Dutch colonizers.

However, with the decline of the Omaguas, who remained settled in small enclaves, the Ticuna returned to the banks of the great rivers, becoming one of the most numerous indigenous nations in this region. Currently its population is around 70,000 inhabitants in Brazil, Colombia and Peru.

Today they practice fishing, itinerant horticulture, hunting, gathering, trade and crafts. The crops or chagras are close to their homes and they sow after felling and burning, cassava, banana, corn, chili and fruit trees. They fish for gambitana (Colossoma brachypomus), pirarucú (Arapaima gigas), palometa (Mylossoma duriventre), pintadillo (Brachyplatystoma spp.) and piranhas.

Although very slowly, too slowly, their beginnings to be recognized, albeit very slowly, in the countries where they live, finally remaining as the main witnesses of one of the most dramatic human tragedies in the South American continent.